While ReDem for Research ensures the quality of individual market research studies at the project level, ReDem for Panels controls the quality of online access panels at the member level. Both tools use artificial intelligence for this purpose.
Professional Survey Fraud: Phone Farming as a New Threat
The euphoria of the past to conduct online surveys quickly for little money has led to an enormous price competition. Hardly anyone demanded transparent quality controls or doubted the reliability of the results achieved in this way.
At the same time, the degree of professionalization of survey fraud has increased sharply. Whereas in the past this was primarily done in low-wage countries in a centrally organized framework like a call center - the so-called click farms - through an amateurish click-through of surveys as quickly as possible and was easy to identify, today phone farming represents the challenge in the fight against fraud.
This is because professionals operate decentrally from home via a network of locally connected smartphones. Through the use of modern technologies such as AI, bots, botnets and VPNs, they automatically produce a large number of fake interviews, which are not conspicuous by their digital fingerprint or by speeding, straightlining or nonsense answers. The verification of identity by SMS or voice is also handled automatically via Internet services (such as text verified).
Protect online surveys from professional fraud
With the AI-based quality controls ReDem for Panels and ReDem for Research, professional survey fraud can be successfully identified:
1) On the one hand, ReDem for Panels is used by panel operators to check all those who want to join an online panel. This behavioral check, disguised as a welcome survey, represents the second hurdle after determining the identity, because interested parties with fraudulent intent do not become members of the panel. In addition, ReDem for Panels offers a behavioral check used for panel maintenance as a further hurdle, which is carried out at regular intervals to identify the panel members who are not (or no longer) trustworthy and should therefore be excluded from the panel.
2) At the market research level, as the last hurdle in the quality assurance process, ReDem for Research is used by market researchers to automatically ensure the data quality of their studies during the field phase, thus saving costs and time by adhering to the quotas, eliminating the need to re-recruit participants and eliminating manual clean-up. ReDem for Research durch betriebliche oder institutionelle Marktforschende die Datenqualität ihrer Studien während der Feldphase automatisiert sichergestellt und so durch das Einhalten der Quoten, dem dadurch nicht notwendigen Nachrekrutieren von Teilnehmern sowie dem Wegfall des manuellen Bereinigens Kosten und Zeit gespart.
The use of both ReDem tools in combination with modern technologies for identity verification and red herring questions provides comprehensive protection against both inattentive participants and human and technological survey fraud.
The end customer can minimize the risk of bad decisions due to poor data by demanding strict and transparent quality controls from their contractors.
Detailed information about ReDem for Panels and a field report from Talk Online Panel can be found here in our webinar:
